I have some good news and bad news.
Good news: YABC’s traffic continues to grow by leaps and bounds each month. We are seeing incredible numbers and the YABC Community continues to grow each day. This is AWESOME.
More good news: Because we’re growing so quickly, we’re receiving hundreds of book listing submissions daily, most of which are small press or self-published books. Which is also AWESOME.
Bad news: The more submissions we receive, the longer it takes to manually approve each one. Some listings are waiting for weeks to be approved. Sometimes months. This is not so awesome.
But there is a fix! Hooray!
To help speed things along and help small press and self-published books gain the exposure they deserve, we’ve decided to roll out a whole new feature called YABC Indie.
Now, from here on out, anyone who qualifies as a small press or self-published author can bypass the manual approval process by purchasing a paid listing (just $3.99!). The listing will be automatically approved (no more waiting!) and posted live to our site in our new Indie section. (That nifty new link up there in the top navigation bar.)
Why are we so excited about this? Because now small press and self-published books won’t get buried among mainstream titles on YABC. They’ll stand out, making them more accessible for our readers. And our readers ARE looking for small press and self-published books. I get asked for recommendations all the time. Teens, especially, are looking for the more affordable reads they can download on their e-readers.
We love indie books here at YABC. In fact, several members of our staff have published indie titles, myself included. Independent publishing is a fast-growing market and it deserves a fair playing field. We’re happy to make that happen on YABooksCentral.com.
We still have a long way to go, but we’ll continue trying to make YABC bigger and better.
Now go check out the new small press and self-published books in the new Indie Section!
And one more celebratory animated gif for the road… (I can’t help myself.)
1) Yay for ALL OF THIS!!
2) Not gonna tell you how long it took me before I saw the “Indie” link on the navbar *insert Jeopardy theme*. 0_o
3) Saw the first .gif & immediately thought, “Do the chickens have large talons?” ;).
Ha! I’ve hidden it well from you. 😉
This is fabulous exposure for our indie titles! So many really amazing books are coming out from indie presses, and this gives us a place to showcase those and easily find them. I love it!!
This seems like a “win” for everyone! And like Jen, after seeing the first .gif I have started quoting that movie…to myself. “I want that.”
I’m getting to used to hanging out on FB. I wanted to click “like!” for this. But maybe better that I actually type w00T! and yay! and that this sounds great. Also, hooray for YABC leaping and bounding.
Um, “too.” “Too used to” I meant oo, not o. Chalk it up to typing on the IPad which is a squirrely sort of typing at the best of times. :p
Oh very cool! Can’t wait to do use this! Thanks!
I love anything that involves Andy from Parks and Rec!